I play the fiddle and feel that playing the dulcimer has helped me play it..I don't play many chords..just melody string and drones.. so having a lot of fiddle tunes in my head it seems to be easy to find the note interval on the fiddle.. just my experience..of course intonation is a bit tough but tuner helps...i find that just going for it without timidity is best..good luck and fmhave fun
Good call, I forgot about the frets. I'll test them with that nickel-detecting liquid that turns pink when it touches nickel.
My full-size dulcimer uses the black coated strings from folkcraft and they're pretty nice.
I found a good bit of discussion about nickel allergy on guitar player websites. I found many alternatives including plain stainless steel strings (although some may contain small amounts of nickel). One item that folks often did.not consider is that the frets on the instrument often contain nickel. For someone with a nickel allergy the frets may need to be replaced.
A consideration for strings is to use coated strings like Elixirs although after a while the coating will wear off.
Ken
"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."
I'm curious how this goes, @grysbok. A woman who comes to my local dulcimer club also has a metal allergy. I have encouraged her to try nylon strings, but so far she just plays wearing gloves and a face mask.
Please keep us posted. I fear the dulcimer will not sound as nice with nylon strings (those octave dulcimers can chime like little bells!), but given your allergy you don't really have a choice. My hope is that it will still sound decent.
I'm thinking about swapping my octave dulcimer over to nylon strings. Now that I've started practicing regularly, I've remembered I have a nickel allergy. I figure nylon strings will let me just sidestep the whole messiness of finding nickel-free strings.
My instrument's vibrating string length is 19 inches. I aim to tune in DAD, an octave above standard.
Any words of warning? I know it'll likely be quieter, I'm cool with this. I also know the strings will be a different diameter, so my bridge and nut may need to be replace. Happily, they aren't glued in and I have
On order:
I'm not too worried about achieving a certain sound, I just want to have fun plucking around. The dulcimer feels like an anarchy instrument--there's no wrong way to be a dulcimer (and now I want a peanut butter cup.)
Good luck on your fiddling adventure... (you already know we are Fans of Nate and all his endeavors!)
Being married to a wonderful fiddler, I know what a challenge it is to learn to fiddle and not sound like a dying cat. I second what Dusty said but would refine it say it likely takes more like three years to not sound horrible. HOWEVER!- you being NATE you might well take to fiddling like a duck to water.
Keep us posted and don't be afraid to post some early clips of your progress. We can take it, scritchy-scratchies and all! 
Ken, I've become a bit of an instrument hoarder and I probably own more instruments than anyone could master in a lifetime, so I get what you mean. The fiddle is one that I feel more motivation for than other instruments so I finally bought myself a beginner model. I am hoping some stuff I learned on mandolin can transfer over
Nate
I took violin lessons when I was in 5th and 6th grades and then stopped when I started 7th grade. Sometimes I think it would be fun to start up again, but then I realize that I already have more instruments than I have time to play them all. Over the years I've had a few violins come through my hands and I get the itch. Cleaning out a closet the other day my discovered another violin. I didn't know it was in there. I'm not going to start playing. Really, we need to pass it on to someone who will. Maybe I'll just take it out of the case and see what shape it is in. Well, let me tighten up the bow and see how it sounds. I'm not going to play that violin. Maybe I'll just fiddle with it a little bit.
Ken
"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."
Have fun fiddling! One nice thing about fiddling is you can be going along quite nicely and then you're not. 
Haha I like that dusty. I must be a fast learner because it only took me about 30 seconds to be bad at it
The piano is easy. Push a button and a nice, clean tone comes out. The fiddle is tough. You have to practice for a year just to be bad at it.
Good luck!
Ive just started learning fiddle! It's the one instrument that Ive always wished I was really good at, if I could pick one. Guess it's finally time to get that ball rolling!
Nate
Shooter, I built a cigar box guitar tuned DAD before I built any dulcimers. To me a 3 string CBG is the same as a chromatic strumstick. Cigar box guitars led me to building dulcimers, and I still like building cigar box dulcimers a lot. It's all a lot of fun
PS I recommend that new mandolin players start with 1 string per course while learning the chords, then add in the second string once you have the shapes down. Those strings can really shred up your fingertips and limit the amount of time you can practice when you're first starting, which makes a lot of people burn out on Mando
Nate
This maybe a little of topic but since I saw some of us playing playing accordion/concertina maybe I should share this short article.:https://medium.com/@cassidybole0712/maintenance-and-care-of-concertinas-9a2ed8a86ec7
I don't own a Ron Gibson dulcimer, but I've played two. One was a Barbara Allen baritone of which I posted a video fingerpicking a quick medley . The other was a used Jenny Lind model that I encountered in a music store. I played a couple of tunes on it and went back the next day to buy it but was too late; it was gone.
Ron's dulcimers look and sound great. His prices are very reasonable for the quality of instrument.
Hey Lorilee. I actually just received my 6 string Baritone from Ron a few weeks ago. I love it. His prices are very fair. The workmanship is beautiful. He is so easy to work with. The sound of my baritone is deep and rich. Because his prices are so good, don't cheat yourself out of a couple of upgrades since this will last a lifetime.
Mine is all walnut with gold Grover tuners and bone nut and bridge.
The picture is a little grainy and not great cause I took it at my office desk while I am working.
Ron made/makes outstanding modern-trad style dulcimers. Which one are you considering? Have you checked out his website?
Does anyone know about or own a Ron Gibson dulcimer? Looking for opinions/experiences/reviews before I seriously consider getting one.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of pickups because of all the added fuss of having to bring an amp and make sure you have power supply, plus I'm not someone you can trust with cords around their feet lol.
That's why I make some of my dulcimers really thin, really large in volume, with metal cake pans, and with really heavy gauge strings. They're SUPER loud and can hold their ground against other instruments when played acoustically. In fact I have to play very gently when playing with other dulcimers or I will drown them out lol.
I have only seen one real resonator dulcimer and it was even louder than mine, so a dulcibro seems like the ticket if you want to be louder than the banjo. In general some dulcimers are much louder than others, and are better suited to playing alongside loud instruments.
Is it really normal for a dulcimer to have a very weak, drowned out sound?
In my experience yes if you don't use a pickup. In our bluegrass session I mostly play guitar since the dulcimer won't be heard against the dobro, fiddles and banjos :)
However it depends: When I join on dulcimer some of the other girls and guys change their style a little bit so I'm not totally drowned out. Or i play the dulcimer just in the late hours (after most of my fellow bluegrassians already left).
Another possibility is to place the dulcimer on a table or a wooden board on your lap. In both cases the sound gets amplified. Some information on this forum:
https://fotmd.com/forums/forum/instruments-discuss-specific-features-luthiers-instrument-problems-questions/41358/why-is-it-called-a-possum-board
If you have some skills in woodworking you might be able to build your own possum board (like seen on this page: http://www.dulcimerseite.de/tipps-zur-spielhaltung.html ). Otherwise most dulcimer builders should also be able to supply you with one.
Personally I prefer the sound and ergonomics of playing on a table if possible.
Best regards, Jost.
I always used to find that a mtn dulcimer gets drowned out in a recording of several musicians on different instruments, if the person who is recording does not take special steps with the microphone placements to ensure otherwise. If you have a fiddle, banjo, mando, and dulcimer and mic all of them equally or just have a mic placed in the middle of the group of musicians, the dulcimer sound will be almost lost among them. When playing in real life, it's a little easier to hear the dulcimer among the live group. That's just from my own experience though.
The old forum discussions on either of the two ED sites are not archived or accessible, i believe. If I'm wrong, someone please point us to exactly where/how they are located. The only things archived from the original ED site were Tabs, Events, Articles, and club listings I think. Not forum discussions. I'm not even sure where the ED Articles are archived anymore. Many of them were also published in Mel Bay's dulcimersessions .com website, which no longer exists either. 
Look at the old Everything Dulcimer archives. IIRC there were a number of discussion of Honea dulcimers 'back in the day'.
That sounds like just what I want! Although I'm not sure where to find/how to search said archives — all I'm finding is that the everythingdulcimer.com site is telling me it's ready to have website files uploaded, and that this FOTMD post that says the ED archives are not being saved. Maybe someone could point me in a more correct direction?
Edited to add: Well, and also I found an archive of the ED dulcimer tabs , but that's a different thing. 
We're just getting things started growing again here, with the Fall/Winter rains coming fairly regularly now. Summers are brutally hot but quite lacking in rain and everything dries up. Luckily we didn't get too much moister from Hurricane Idalia here a couple weeks back... Feast or famine.
Hurricane Lee missed us but according to the National Hurricane Center it will be coming ashore, hopefully as "just" a Tropical Storm, somewhere between Boston and Halifax on Saturday. Folks there are gonna get some seriously windy and wet weather.
Look at the old Everything Dulcimer archives. IIRC there were a number of discussion of Honea dulcimers 'back in the day'.
Is it really normal for a dulcimer to have a very weak, drowned out sound?
Is it really normal for a dulcimer to have a very weak, drowned out sound?
I don't. In our local monthly bluegrass jam however one of our regular participants (let's call him Adam) always bring his German concertina (english and german concertina are different, I'm just not sure at the moment which difference exactly).
Although it's quite unusual for bluegrass it's enrich the sound a lot. And in the later hours Adam often sings German folk songs while accompanying himself with the concertina.
The combination of the squeeze box and his strong, emotional vocal performance surely are a treat. Alas as far I know he don't record anything and I would never record without permission from him.
Marlboro and Brattleboro Vermont area mountain dulcimer players gather on the 3rd Tuesday of the month to share the joy of playing the dulcimer. All are welcome to join, For details please see:
https://www.marlborodulcimer.org/
A poet-friend, Val Coleman, once sent me these lines:
"There is no storm
When the dulcimer sings.
Hatred and hurricanes
Wait in the wings."
The only time I've played with a concertina was in a jam, but I was playing guitar, not dulcimer.
Ken
"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."
What fun to revive this thread. I remember many years ago going to Bryan Bowers concert and he walked on stage with a stack of autoharps all tuned for different kep=ys and songs. He spread them out behind him on the stage in those triangular shape guitar stands. He turned to the audience and asked what you call a group of autoharps like this and then answered his own question: an embarrassment of autoharps. I've never been embarrassed by all my dulcimers.
Ken
"The dulcimer sings a sweet song."
I have said for many years that I can be having a bad day, and a little time with one of my dulcimers just makes it better!
A meditation of dulcimers? A therapy of dulcimers? 
I've got a new dulcimer in the house, whee! My latest acquirement is a David Honea (picture posted in this album ).
That said, it looks like the luthier's dulcimer website is no more, and the Wayback Machine version is sadly lacking in photos. There are a few of his dulcimers listed used on eBay right now, and I found a little discussion of him in past threads here, but I'd love to see (or hear about) even more of his work, because I'm curious like that.
So if anybody else has pictures or stories or thoughts on David Honea dulcimers, feel free to share, and thanks in advance! 
It's that time of year when the flowers and veggies are all getting overgrown and ragged looking. Time to start pulling things out, pruning, tidying up a little area here and there as the plants become exhausted by it all. I've learned the hard way to not procrastinate too much on end-of-year garden cleanup.
Happily we're still getting some real nice tomatoes. Not lots of them, but just enough to enjoy the bacon/tomato/mayo sandwiches we love to make this time of year. 
Can't remember that I've ever had the opportunity. Maybe once, years ago, in a multi-instrument jam. Not exactly a common folk instrument around these parts. I've been to a number of statewide folk meet-ups here in Florida and can't remember seeing or hearing any sort of squeeze-box.
Do you guys like to play along with a concertina?
I forgot to mention, you can find those built in pre-amps with tuners online for anywhere from 15-300$ depending on the quality. You'd have to cut a hole in the side of your merlin to install the display into, and youd have to cut a slot into your bridge under your saddle for the pickup to sit in. Nothing too complicated to do yourself, and definitely something you could get done by a pro if you wanted to. Just make sure you get a preamp small enough to fit in your instrument, perhaps a ukulele preamp.
I have built a dulcimer with a fishman preamp that I recycled from an acoustic guitar. It had an UST or basically a pickup under the bridge and had a built in metronome, tuner, and tone controls.
Personally I am not a big fan of how amplification changes the tone so much, however I'm also not a big fan of the hollow, plunking tone that strumsticks often have. I have tried one of those little piezos, and preferred that, because the original tone was mostly preserved. In my opinion, many strumsticks players are also guitar players who want a more gutsy, guitar like tone, and install pickups to achieve that.
When it comes to tuners built into amps, maybe this is just me, but I find their displays to be very unintuitive to use to tune. I have a headstock tuner but I mostly use an app on my phone. A modern smartphone has a very high quality microphone, typically better quality than you'll ever need for tuning, and also typically better than an actual tuner, plus the display is much bigger and has more details. The clip on can be handy in a group setting or anywhere noisy.
Nate
I must have a good one, then. *shrug* Still, its a roots instrument usually played in an environment (traditionally) where everyone would tune by ear to relative so, historically its not that far off. LOL
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